page 184

Chapter XXVII. Shearers' Rest.

The Shearers' Rest was a house of a type very common in those days. Common enough yet, I dare say, in some districts, but not quite so numerous or prosperous since railways have abridged distance and rendered travel easy. It was one of those traps acutely engineered by human spiders for the destruction of human flies. It was a place where shepherds and station hands could make sure of knocking down their cheques with the least possible waste of time; a place to which shearers, after fleecing plump sheep and woolly yearlings at a pound a hundred, could comfortably repair for their own yearly submission to the fleecing and 'lambing-down' process, without which existence would be a burden to them. It was a place where a man might make certain of getting mad drunk in an hour if he laid his mind to it, and of getting as effective a fit of D. T. to follow as could be secured anywhere on the face of the earth. For Mr. Hawkins, familiarly known as 'Hot Property Joe,' hocussed his grog with a liberal hand, never stinting the bad tobacco, mix vomica, and other villainous substances with which he added to the natural richness and strength and deadliness of his rum and brandy. It is only justice to Mr. Hawkins to mention that he drank freely of his compounds himself. He believed quite as earnestly as most of his customers in an economy of time in the matter of drinking. Three real drunks in a day, with intervals of sleep and slaughter, counted with him as better than one drunk which took all the day to get at. Fairly pure liquor was so long getting hold of a man whose carcase was seasoned by ten years of pretty constant spreeing!

Mrs. Hawkins, though able 'to drink fair' with anybody, had a preference, originating doubtless in the naturally weak taste of her sex, for untobaccoed spirits, and kept a private bottle—dubious stuff indeed, but better than the other—whereby she kept her chances of widowhood considerably page 185above par. Any innocent dweller in a city might fancy that life at Shearers' Rest was dull, generally speaking; but that would be a serious error of imagination. Times were excessively lively as a general thing at Shearers' Rest, thanks to the genial proprietor. The fun was a little monotonous, perhaps; but there could be no imputation of dulness when a man drank himself mad, then drank himself sane again, and anon back to madness, without let or hindrance. Hot Property Joe's insanity had such a variety of phases, too, and there was always such a dark uncertainty as to which would be next in operation. He might try to tomahawk his wife—she had no fear of him when she was awake, she always said, because she 'could knock him over with a sapling as easy as wink;' but if he caught her asleep, she 'cotched it, and no mistake!' as she had scars to testify. Or his efforts might be directed against himself, and then, whether he tried to set himself afire, or to drown himself in the waterhole, he was equally awkward to manage; and things had to be destroyed in extinguishing him, or he stirred up the drinking water unpleasantly. Often, however, his insanity found relief in simple howling, in which all the dogs invariably joined in a friendly way, and which was kept up for indefinite periods of time, according to the vigour of the attack.

This little amusement was harmless enough, but not conducive to the comfort or recovery of a sick woman, as may be imagined. And Philiberta must have succumbed to her illness and the combination of unpleasantnesses surrounding her but for the happy (is that a wisely chosen word—happy?) advent of a small tribe of blacks, who were making their way to the interior after a periodical visit to, and grand all-satisfying spree at, the nearest township. Of this tribe was Queen Mary, a scraggy old lubra of most repulsive appearance, wife to King Billy, the chief of the tribe. They were all in high fettle after their pasear. The men were majestic in the cast-off swallow-tailed coats and high hats of new chums who had learned the uselessness of such attire; the women were gay in ragged garments of feminine finery. Queen Mary herself was perfectly page 186regal in a crinoline, through the bare steels of which her unlovely form was visible in all its startling nudity, she holding it positively sinful to conceal the ornamental balloon with her blanket. Her husband was magnificent in a tall white hat and a pair of broad-checked trousers, with his brass badge of royalty hung upon his naked breast, and a lady's pink parasol to shade his complexion from the sun when on the march, to brush off the flies and mosquitoes when camping.

They had a little money among them—a few odd shillings, sixpences, and coppers saved from the recent debauch, for the purchase of fluid refreshment at wayside shanties; and the remnant of this wealth was destined for the Shearers' Rest.

'Got sick piccaninny in there?' said Queen Mary, making free with the small establishment, and discovering our heroine in her bunk. And indeed Philiberta was so shrunken and emaciated by this time, that she looked no more than a piccaninny.

Mrs. Hawkins laughed loudly.

'Piccaninny!' quoth she. 'You think we make piccaninny all as big as that since last time you make a light Shearers' Rest, Queen Mary? Too much gammon, you!'

'No fear; don't you believe it. By God!' responded the lubra, airing all her colonial English promptly, as was her wont; 'but what's up long a him?'

''Tain't a him neither; it's a her,' said Mrs. Hawkins, laughing again in that roaring wide-mouthed fashion of hers that always exhibited so much of the interior of her throat.

Philiberta's hair had been, at her own entreaty, cut short by Mrs. Hawkins. The length and tangle of it had been intolerable to the sufferer; now she was very closely shorn indeed.

'Her!' cackled old Mary. 'Too much gammon, her. Well, what's up long a her, then, eh?'

'Brackish water,' was the laconic reply.

'Damnation!' said Queen Mary, much in the indifferently sympathetic tone in which a lady of civilization might exclaim, 'Dear me!' 'No good that dam water. Been long time sick, him—her?'

'Yes, long time. Sick one moon close up,'

page 187

'What you give me make um better two days?'

'One pint rum.'

'Kai-i-i!' with lofty contempt. 'Me get one pint rum for nothing any place, I think it Too much gammon, you, Missa Hawkins. But old Mary make um sick piccaninny better for nothing—blest if I don't. Look here, I go back along track two hour, then come here along a doctor's stuff—see if I don't—all right'

Away she went, with a swinging stride and a rattling of hoops to right and left; and in less than her self-appointed time she was back, with a bundle of leaves and herbs stuck in the waist-hand of her crinoline, and another in her hands.

'You gimme hot water, quick,' she said authoritatively to Mrs. Hawkins, 'here, long a my billy.'

It was a nauseous decoction, verily, and not improved by being prepared in a vessel that had served many uses in its time, and retained a flavour of most; but the effect on the invalid was magical.

'Put you on the wallaby track all right again two days,' the old lubra said, when pressing Philiberta to drink; and although that prophecy was not quite fulfilled, our heroine found herself in two clays a long way on the certain track to recovery. Queen Mary instituted herself as nurse, and proved very efficient when not allowed too much rum. She was a weird study for Philiberta's dazed, aching eyes, with her long, leathery breast hanging down past her waist; her skin seamed and scored with the scars of many one-sided battles; her matted, ragged hair, snooded with a strip of scarlet flannel, in which were thrust two or three short black pipes.

In a week Philiberta was on her feet again, wretchedly thin and weak, pale green of complexion, miserable and weary in mind, with that misery and weariness that comes to all sick people when recovering; yet grateful to the old black woman who squatted on her heels beside the bunk, and smoked and swore, and yet tended her with the gentleness of a Sister of Mercy.

'What shall I give you, Queen Mary? How much money you like me give you?'

page 188

'Don't care a dam,' replied the lubra. 'You give me hundred pounds—you give me shilling, half a crown, sov., King Billy get him from me all same, I think it. Give me rum—plenty rum,' said the fair savage, waving her arms about ecstatically. 'I drink it. King Billy never get one drop o' rum out o' me after gone down there,' pointing down her wide, scarlet throat.

'But rum very bad for you; kill blackfellow quick.'

The lubra laughed. 'Gammon!' said she, winking one small, keen eye. 'Too much water kill um blackfellow—like it kill um whitefellow. Too much rum—no fear, cockey!'

'Baal me give lubra rum,' said Philiberta, resolutely. 'What else you like, Queen Mary?

The old woman eyed her wistfully.

'You know it that stuff kill um dingo; sometime kill um blackfellow.'

'Poison?' said Philiberta, doubtfully.

'I donno. You know that stuff squatter give um dingo for stop it catch um sheep; make um dingo kick it like this?'

Here the lubra gave an unearthly howl, and fell lengthwise on the ground, writhing, struggling, kicking; giving altogether a fine dramatic representation of the agonies of death by poison.

'You know it that stuff?' she inquired, coming suddenly back to her normal self, and gazing eagerly at Philiberta.

'Strychnine—arsenic?'

'Strick-a-neene, ar-sa-nikee!' repeated the old woman thoughtfully. 'I donno; very like. Strick-a-nine, ar-sa-nikee kill um dingo dead? Whitefellow, blackfellow dead?'

'Yes, kill um dead; very dead.'

'You got some?'

'I? No. What for you want it?'

'What for I want it? Want it kill King Billy,' said the lubra, dropping her voice to a whisper of concentrated hatred. 'Him big one debil-debil, that old blackfellow. G-r-r-r-r!' a long, rumbling groan and a sudden venomous snap of the teeth, while the small black eyes rolled ferociously. 'Him knock um me down with waddy; him chop um me with toma-page 189hawk, likit chop um one sheep. Look a yah!' lifting her matted locks and showing a half-healed wound on her scalp with congealed blood all round it. 'Him take it my money; him take it my—my—you know it—you know it—white lubra give it to me.' Here she clearly indicated the parasol. 'Him take it everythins; Queen Mary nothing. Dam him up! Queen Mary kill him some one night, I think it, no gammon! You got um dead dingo stuff?'

'No, no.'

'Never mind; all right. Some one night King Billy sleep; moon come up, Queen Mary come along a tomahawk; sh-sh-sh-ai-i-i! Baal King Billy take it my money that time no more; no fear. Gimme rum, Missa Hawkins—quick!'

She was smarting under a grievance clearly, and King Billy's chances of longevity were very slim.

The tribe left Shearers' Rest that day, Mrs. Hawkins having stopped the rum supply she had been rather lavish with in keeping them about until Queen Mary should have quite cured Philiberta. The old lubra flatly refused the latter's money, with a fine feminine determination to accept no benefits in which her own individual share would be nil; but sundry stage properties of Philiberta's—bits of glittering tinsel and shining ribbons—she received joyfully, and went off with a high sense of the 'sick piccaninny's' generosity and her own importance as the best-dressed female in the district.

That night the landlord of the Shearers' Rest took it into his head to vary his usual performances by setting the house on fire. Philiberta and Mrs. Hawkins barely escaped with a singeing, for both were asleep when he did it—the latter under the usual soporific influence, the former from the natural tendency to repose of a system worn and wearied by much suffering. Mrs. Hawkins had one advantage—she was dressed; that is, as far as she could ever be said to be dressed. It was her custom to wear one set of garments night and day, 'the clock round,' as she said herself, until they would no longer hang on her back; so she was never to be caught at a disadvantage, But Philiberta on this night had as usual only her page 190nightdress on, to supplement which she dragged a blanket from her bunk as she fled from the blazing house.

Mrs. Hawkins generally took a humorous and lenient view of her husband's drunken freaks, only administering an occasional 'straightener' when he threatened to become unmanageable. But this exploit of his, she felt and said, was 'no joke;' and made him realize that too, for she admonished him so severely with her favourite sapling that he lay in the shed for many hours a miserable mass of bruised and swollen flesh. Sober too; which was heartrending, but irremediable, for every drop of spirit was burnt in the house.

'That's all I care about,' said Mrs. Hawkins with mournful sincerity. 'Campin' out's nothin', now the hot nights is comin' on; but here's the shearin' just closin', and in less nor a week the men will be a comin' down with their cheques, and as thirsty as eternal fire, and never a bob's worth of liquor to squench 'em. Oh, you ugly lolloping wretch. I'll serve you out for this, see if I don't!'

Meanwhile there was Philiberta without any clothes or money. Absolutely penniless, for when leaving Melbourne she had foolishly brought the remnant of her bank store with her. Mrs. Hawkins showed a womanly spirit of unselfishness in forgetting for the time her own troubles, and starting off for one of the out-stations of the nearest great sheep-run in search of raiment for Philiberta. In about three hours she returned with—a Crimean shirt, a pair of moleskin trousers, a red silk sash to belt the latter in at the waist, and a 'wide awake' hat.

'These has got to do ye for the present,' said Mrs. Hawkins, 'Petticoats wasn't to be had, and I don't see as it matters much what you wears in this part of the country. And Moffit's man is goin' to bring along a spare horse and saddle to-night, so's you kin get out o' this. I expects you won't be sorry to go.'

'Scarcely sorry,' replied Philiberta, 'but what am I to do about returning the horse?'

'Oh, you needn't fret yerself blind about that,' said the woman, with a loud laugh. 'One horse or so ain't likely to be missed out of old Moffit's mobs, nohow. Nor 'twon't ruin of page 191him, neither, if so be as he never knows on it, but 'twould be like takin' the skin off of his teeth if he did know it. As for the saddle,' said Mrs. Hawkins, with grim facetiousness, 'yer kin sell that the first chance yer get, and send me the proceeds in a drarft on the Bank of Hingland, which there's heaps o' brarnch establishments in this 'ere wealthy locality.'

Philiberta's anxiety to depart from the place overcame any scruple of conscience, and so, behold her! twenty-four hours later mounted, cavalier fashion, on a restive, half-broken colt that would have been altogether too much for her if its superfluous spirit had not been previously lashed and ridden out of it by the young boundary-rider to whose easy generosity she was beholden for it.

'If anybody meets you on the road,' said the humorous Mrs. Hawkins, 'they'll take you for a dashed bushranger, by Jingo!'

A feeble bushranger, verily, with habiliments fitting her dwindled form 'too much,' and limbs all trembling from nervous excitement, and a wan, anxious, attenuated face. But not lacking courage surely, else she had never set forth so bravely to cross that weary waste of plains, and risk she knew not what of difficulty and danger, alone.

Right early on the morning of a day that threatened intense heat, ere yet the slight dew had evaporated from the earth, and while yet a soft grey haze kept the atmosphere cool and pleasant, she started, looking back from time to time as she rode, to wave her hand in adieu to the woman who had revealed so much of tenderness in contrast with her rough exterior.

The last distinct view of the Shearers' Rest showed Philiberta the trembling and repentant proprietor getting together some slabs for the re-erection of the hut, and his wife alternately 'gaffing the contract,' as she herself would have expressed it, and shading her eyes with her hands for a last glimpse of our heroine's receding figure.